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Building a Better Buildings Department


Photo by Jason Kuffer
The Department of Buildings had issued 13 violations for this Manhattan site where a 2008 crane collapse killed seven people.

The tragic deaths this month of two veteran ironworkers at a West 83rd Street construction site were a shocking reminder of how perilous construction work can be in our city. What was not so shocking, unfortunately, was the trail of workplace violations that were issued by the city Department of Buildings at the site after the fatalities -- 11 in all, including eight, Class 1 violations, which are defined by the city as posing a "threat that severely affects life, health, [and] safety." In this case, that included failures to install vertical netting, guard rails and toe boards, all safety features intended to prevent serious falls.

No system of inspections is ever going to prevent every accident. But for too long the city's Department of Buildings has been plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency, allegations of corruption and missed warning signs at fatal construction sites. A big part of this problem, I believe, can be traced to the department's conflicting mission to both promote and police development. On the one hand, its agents are charged with issuing permits to allow new developments; on the other, its inspectors are called upon to issue violations at those same developments when problems arise.

 

There is a better way. The city should create an independent office of inspections, one that streamlines the inspection process but also removes any tension within the buildings department over its dual role.

This is an idea with broad and deep support. Both the city's business and labor communities have endorsed the concept of an independent inspection office, as did a task force set up by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as far back as 2000. And yet the issue remains unresolved, despite a well-documented history of lax -- and sometimes dangerous -- oversight problems.

City Hall's announcement this week that building permits would now include bar codes -- allowing residents to use smart phones to access information already available online-- is a welcome advance. But it falls well short of the major reform that is needed at the buildings department.

A History of Deadly Problems

The untimely deaths of veteran steelworkers Brett McEnroe, 49, and Roy Powell, 51, at the West 83rd Street site last week are only the latest examples. On March 15, 2008, a crane collapsed at a construction site in East Midtown, killing seven people; the Department of Buildings had issued 13 violations for this site. Two months later, a crane toppled over on the Upper East Side, killing two people at a site with 14 violations.

The common denominator in all these accidents was a lengthy backlog of open buildings department and Environmental Control Board violations, as well as a flurry of new ones issued in the wake of disaster.

A later report by my office found tens of thousands of Manhattan buildings to have serious safety or structural violations, including many schools and hospitals. The report also examined long-standing complaints about the erratic training of building department inspectors, as well as the antiquated system of hand-written violation records the agency still uses.

Taking Advantage of the Slump

It is time to reform the buildings department, and the time to do it is now, while the issuance of new building permits is down some 80 percent since 2006 as a result of the still-stalled economy. We must act now so that when good times do return -- as they always do in New York -- we will be ready with a modernized, streamlined Department of Buildings.

We need to establish an independent inspection office. We need to properly train our inspectors. And we need to arm them with handheld computers -- already used by other agencies -- so that information about violations can be swiftly relayed to other inspectors and property owners.

We know the next building boom is coming -- the New York Building Congress counted 692 "stalled" building sites in the five boroughs last October, many of them just waiting for the economy to turn the corner. Together, these projects represent hundreds of millions of dollars of unrealized investment -- and thousands of good paying construction jobs.

New York's building stock is the backbone of our urban infrastructure and is no less important than the roads and railways that keep us all connected. Failing to properly regulate its growth and safety is a risk we can no longer afford.

Scott Stringer is Manhattan borough president.

Experience Shows Living Wage Policies Work


After recently scuttling a bill that would require paid sick days, the Bloomberg administration and the business community now are training their sights on two more City Council proposals intended to help workers. The bills ask developers who receive major taxpayer subsidies to guarantee that the jobs their big projects create will pay decent wages.

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In its efforts to combat this initiative, the administration and its allies have raised a number of arguments. But examination of the facts shows that the objections have no basis in reality. Instead, New York's own experiences and those of other cities demonstrate that living-wage policies are important tools for ensuring that development delivers the middle-class jobs that communities -- and our economy -- need in order to recover and thrive.

The City Council Proposals

The City Council proposals would build on the city's current living-wage law, which was enacted in 1995 and broadened in 2002. It guarantees a $10 minimum wage plus benefits or the prevailing industry wage (whichever is higher) for certain types of service workers at companies that operate under contracts with city agencies. The new proposals (Intro 0018 and Intro 0251) would expand these successful local wage standards to workers employed on taxpayer-subsidized economic development projects.

Every year, the city awards many millions of dollars in tax breaks to promote growth across the five boroughs -- everything from the Hudson Yards project on the West Side, to the new Coney Island in Brooklyn. While these projects are touted for the jobs they will create, security guards and cashiers at subsidized projects often are paid just $8 or $9 per hour with no benefits.

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Under the City Council proposals, when developers seek such taxpayer subsidies, they would need to recruit tenants and building service contractors that will provide decently paying jobs. Specifically, on projects where developers receive subsidies, all workers would be required to be paid at least $10 per hour -- a very modest wage floor. And for building service workers -- for whom the standard wage in most large buildings in New York is more than $20 per hour -- developers would be required to match that prevailing industry wage.

Big Real Estate, Not Small Businesses

For starters, the administration says the bills would hurt small business. But the developers that receive these subsidies are about as far from small businesses as one can get. And the businesses they bring in as partners are typically major retail and hotel chains, not mom-and-pop shops.

In fact, small businesses generally oppose the city's policy of subsidizing big development projects, because it gives the chain stores an unfair advantage over local mom-and-pops that don't get tax breaks. That is why small-business groups like the Neighborhood Retail Alliance support the City Council's living-wage and prevailing-wage bills. They argue that if these big projects are going to be supported with taxpayer funds, they should at least pay their workers decently.

Developers Will Still Develop

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's other main argument is that it is unrealistic to ask developers to guarantee decent wages and that doing so will kill projects and jobs. That's a serious charge. But the experiences of New York and other major cities present compelling evidence to the contrary.

Although you would never know it from the mayor's rhetoric, Bloomberg has required wage standards on most major development projects across the city in order to win City Council support. This started in 2005 with the redevelopment of the Brooklyn waterfront in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Bloomberg, then–City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and developers signed an agreement to pay decent wages to the janitors and security guards who would eventually be employed in the buildings there. Far from killing any projects or jobs, the developers eagerly moved forward with new luxury high-rises up and down the waterfront. Today, buildings like the Toll Brothers' Northside Piers complex in Williamsburg operate profitably, while paying their janitors solid, middle-class wages.

Since 2005, the city has gone on to use similar standards on other major projects, such as the Willets Point, Coney Island and Domino Sugar factory redevelopments. There is no evidence that the wage guarantees have hurt the city's ability to recruit developers, or developers' ability to get financing or attract tenants for their projects.

But while New York has begun to make progress, it still must play catch-up to other cities in what it expects from businesses that benefit from taxpayers' largesse. Los Angeles, under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has been the national leader in making the creation of living-wage jobs a top priority. No major subsidized development project there goes forward without a living-wage standard -- not just for building service workers, but employees in all low-wage jobs that may be generated. Projects ranging from the Staples Center/L.A. Live sports-and-entertainment district and the Kodak Theater (host to the Academy Awards), to hotel and retail development projects have been built using living-wage standards.

Los Angeles' economic development agency has found that these standards have not prevented developers from balancing project budgets, getting financing, and finding anchor tenants. The employers that the city has partnered with on these projects include major hotel chains like Marriott, Ritz and the W; food-service contractors like HMS Host and Aramark; and retailers like Trader Joe's and Costco.

San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin Newsom, has used the same strategy with equal success. For example, the massive redevelopment of the city's Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point section announced this summer (which will include 635,000 square feet of retail, 2.6 million square feet of office and research space, 10,000 residential units, and a football stadium) will require living wages for all jobs in the project area. The Lennar Corp., the nation's second-largest homebuilder, eagerly sought city approval for the project. The city's living wage was so uncontroversial that there was virtually no mention of it during the public debate over the project.

Stalling With a Study

In an effort to delay action on the proposed bills, the Bloomberg administration has commissioned a million-dollar study of the impact that living-wage laws have had across the nation. The administration hired the nation's leading anti-minimum wage economist, David Neumark from the University of California at Irvine, to conduct the analysis. Neumark, who is affiliated with the Employment Policies Institute -- a lobbying group for low-wage employers seeking to keep wages low -- has staked out an extreme and controversial position on wage standards. He opposed even the modest increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25.

Worse still, his research on living-wage policies has been exposed as fatally flawed. Rather than gather actual data on workers and businesses covered by living-wage policies, Neumark attempts to tease out the impact of such measures from general citywide employment data. However, as more careful economists have pointed out, in most of the cities that have adopted living-wage laws, the policy affects only a very small number of workers. And it simply is not possible to discern the impact -- whether positive or negative -- on such a tiny sliver of the labor market from general data.

Benefits of Living Wages

Last month, the Center for American Progress released an important new national study of living-wage laws that definitively debunked Neumark's findings. It puts to rest the real estate lobby's claims that living-wage policies have impeded job growth by creating an "anti-development" business climate. And it lends support to the large body of careful research over the past decade that has examined actual living-wage policies on the ground -- and documented substantial benefits, not just for workers but also for employers.

For example, in a case study of San Francisco International Airport, University of California economists found the living-wage policy there raised pay by an average of 22 percent for workers such as security screeners, cashiers and restaurant servers. At the same time, airport employers saw annual turnover for security screeners plummet from 94.7 percent to 18.7 percent, resulting in annual savings of $4,275 per employee in recruitment costs. Employers also reported improvements in employee performance, employee morale, and customer service.

Rebuilding the City’s Middle Class and Economy

Bloomberg has begun promoting New York's record of job growth as a model for the nation. But that job growth has produced an hourglass economy, with high-paying finance jobs at the top, low-wage service jobs at the bottom, and less and less for the city's eroding middle class.

Los Angeles has provided a road map for a pro-growth development strategy that expands the tax base and brings in new employers, while improving wages for hotel, retail, and service workers. New York needs to learn from this approach.

Producing more middle-class jobs is vital, not only for New York’s working families, but also for its economy. Because consumer demand powers our economy, a thriving middle class that can afford to spend money at local businesses is essential for sustaining growth. New York's recovery strategy must therefore include initiatives for rebuilding a base of good jobs at good wages for the workers who make the city run. The City Council’s living-wage and prevailing-wage proposals are a good place to start.

Paul K. Sonn is legal co-director of theNational Employment Law Project

The Charter Commission's Unfinished Business


The city has gone through many charters -- and revisions of charters -- since Peter Stuyvesant and his counsel prepared one in 1652. And, writes Scott Stringer, a lot more work needs to be done.

New York City voters will be deciding several proposals for City Charter reform on the November ballot -- and I urge all readers of the Gotham Gazette to participate in this year's election. It's crucial that the people's voice be heard on such issues, and we're fortunate that Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed a city Charter Revision Commission with intelligent, hard-working members who take their job seriously.

 

But I'm disappointed that voters will not be able to review a more comprehensive list of reforms this year -- changes that could have had a dramatic impact on everything from overcrowded schools and inefficient land use planning to innovative food use policies and the empowerment of our community boards. Indeed, I see this year's charter election as a missed opportunity. We have a mere handful of proposals before us this November, and no indication that a more thorough consideration of local government is in the offing.

With a 21-year-break since the last comprehensive charter revision, there was no need to rush the deliberate process of charter reform. And yet that's essentially what the commission did. It had a rare opportunity to engage New Yorkers in a careful re-thinking of our municipal constitution, but instead focused on getting a package before voters in this election.

Earlier this year my office released a 76-page report to the New York City Charter Revision Commission, outlining a series of comprehensive proposals for reform. The city could deal with these and other proposed changes and put them on the ballot next year -- but only if the mayor appoints and convenes a new commission. I strongly recommend that he do just that. With proper public hearings and input, we could finally have a long overdue discussion about the future of our city.

There are a number of instances where the current Charter Commission could have proposed action to remedy a problem facing New York but failed to do so. Here are just a few examples:

  • The issue of overcrowded schools, for example, shows no signs of abating. Every year we hear new horror stories of children unable to enroll in neighborhood schools because of a lack of space. The problem, as my office has shown in several reports, stems from a lack of planning. We revealed that, in one year, New York issued permits for residential construction that would bring 2,300 new students into Manhattan schools, but added only 143 new school seats.

The Department of Education may simply not be well equipped to do this critical planning, but other city agencies already have the expertise and data to plan. Therefore, my office proposed a charter revision requiring that an agency other than the Department of Education focus on this problem: The Department of City Planning would provide student enrollment projections; the Office of the Comptroller would conduct regular needs analyses on school capacity.

  • Our local Community Boardsare thriving in Manhattan, and they play an increasingly visible role in land use decisions. But they need better tools to represent our citizens. I proposed a charter amendment restoring the role of Community Boards as Community Planning Boards. Among a variety of recommendations, I suggested that each board should have the ability to hire a full-time urban planner. This would enable more robust community-based planning and give all of our neighborhoods a greater voice in decisions about New York’s future.
  • As borough president, I have spearheaded Go Green projects in East Harlem and the Lower East Side that promote more environmentally responsible policies and healthier and more sustainable food policy. Indeed, food is at the intersection of health, hunger and the local economy. Rates of diabetes and obesity rosean alarming 17 percent between 2002 and 2004. Today 1.6 million New Yorkers are on food stamps and 3.3 million have trouble affording food. That’s why I sponsored a proposal calling for a Department of Food and Markets to promote food access and economy, and make New Yorkers healthier.
  • For decades, the city's Department of Buildings has been plagued by corruption and dysfunction. Many buildings are notoriously unsafe, with only rare or sporadic inspections. In fall 2009, my office conducted a thorough review of open Department of Buildings and Environmental Control Board violations and foundthat there were nearly a quarter of a million open violations in Manhattan alone. A full third of those were considered "Class 1" or "hazardous." Violations in New York buildings remain open -- or unresolved -- for nearly five years on average. We can't keep waiting for tragedies to happen. I proposed a charter amendment transferring building inspection and remediation duties from the buildings department to a new and independent Office of Investigation.
  • The responsibilities of a borough president have evolved since the position was created in 1897. Today the charter mandates a key role in land use and capital budget decisions, contract oversight, strategic planning, oversight of community boards and appointments to key boards and commissions. The job is largely what you make it: In Manhattan I’ve launched Bank On, a program aimed at persuading thousands of unbanked New Yorkers to open accounts; we created a new 600-seat school as part of negotiations over NYU expansion; we opened a community asthma center in East Harlem that is one of the first of its kind.

    Although borough presidents are meant to be an independent check and balance to the mayor and City Council, their budgets are set and approved by those branches of government. I've proposed a charter amendment granting borough presidents independent budgetary authority, so these elected officials would have a freer hand. Another proposal would allow borough presidents to hire land use counsel to help them beef up planning reviews as they help shape the growth of our city.

    These are the kind of proposals that could and should be on the ballot next year, but only if Mayor Bloomberg appoints a new Charter Revision Commission. As borough president, I will continue to fight for meaningful charter reform, so we finally have a chance to tackle long overdue changes in the nation’s largest city. No one knows what needs to be improved in New York City’s government better than the 8 million people we’re supposed to serve. It's time to begin the conversation.

    Scott M. Stringer is Manhattan borough president.



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